Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia like most school districts prefers to use school buses to transport students with disabilities. But it also must use alternative providers and taxi cab companies to make ends meet.
explained. To meet the needs of these students, Seattle uses alternative service providers to transport students under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, who are in foster care, and that have an Individualized Education Program that lists transportation as a related service. Transportation staff work with special educa- tion personnel before arranging alternative transport to ensure the service won’t pose a health or safety risk or prevent the student from thriving. Maltais indicated that Washington state allows for
pupil transportation by additional alternative service providers such as ALC Schools and Spectra Drive, which act like other contracted transportation vendors school districts work with, or TNCs like HopSkipDrive and Zum that offer app-based service but have increasingly been contracting directly with school districts. But oversight is left largely to individual districts. Washington state regulates non-school-bus vehicles
with a seating capacity including the driver of 10 people or less that are operated by the districts themselves. The- se”white fleet” vehicles are not required to meet school bus specifications but must have a school bus first-aid kit, fire extinguisher, and highway warning kit on board. The state also regulates ride sharing vehicles defined
32 School Transportation News • MARCH 2022
as not-for-profit carpool or vanpools between home and places of education or other institutions. But when it comes to TNCs, the state has been silent on whether they are covered. Traditional school bus transportation is also the first
choice at Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia, but circumstances there also sometimes dictate the use of alternatives. “We try to keep students with disabilities in our transportation, bus or van when possible,” said Francine Furby, director of the Office of Transportation Services. “In cases where we cannot, we evaluate the level of sup- port a student may need and try to match the vendor.” With Fairfax students currently being served by alter-
native transportation, the major challenge is a lack of consistency with vendor-provided transportation. At the same time, burgeoning enrollments also pose problems. “Many of our alternative school sites are full so we’re
having to expand in areas that are not local to our school’s boundary,” Furby added. “This creates the addi- tional challenge of finding a vendor in the area.” To reduce risk, the school system imposes strict
requirements on providers. Furby noted that in con- tracting with the two alternative vendors and two cab
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